Criminal Courts as Organizational Phenomena

Abstract

The study of courts — especially American courts — has attracted scholars from many disciplines in recent years. Lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists each bring their own perspective to bear and apply their own paradigms. Some scholars have analyzed trial courts chiefly in terms of legal phenomena and characteristics; they focus on the judge as decisionmaker and on the formal procedures of trial courts (1)**. As more behaviorally oriented researchers have taken an interest in courts, however, there has been a decided shift from the focus on formal legal procedures to the decision-making process. Attention has been directed to the whole range of decisions made in trial courts, and those who produce them. This has produced considerable research on social psychological traits of judges, and the sociology and psychology of juries (2).

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (Grant Number 33965) to the author and to Professor James Eisenstein. This paper was completed while the author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. However, responsibility for the views stated in this paper rests solely with the author.